Medical students as well as experienced doctors learning new surgical techniques must undergo extensive training before they are qualified to perform surgery on human patients. The training must teach proper techniques employing various medical devices for cutting, penetrating, clamping, grasping, stapling and suturing a variety of tissue types. The range of possibilities that a trainee may encounter is great. For example, different organs and patient anatomies and diseases are presented. The thickness and consistency of the various tissue layers will also vary from one part of the body to the next and from one patient to another. Accordingly, the skills required of the techniques and instruments will also vary. Furthermore, the trainee must practice techniques in readily accessible open surgical locations and in locations accessed laparoscopically.
Numerous teaching aids, trainers, simulators and model organs are available for one or more aspects of surgical training. However, there is a need for model organs or simulated tissue elements that are likely to be encountered in endoscopic, laparoscopic, transanal, minimally invasive or other surgical procedures that include the removal of tumors or other tissue structures. For example, there is a need for realistic model organs for the repeatable practice of removing a tumor or other undesired tissue followed by the closure of the target area by suturing or stapling as part of the same surgical procedure.
In view of the above, it is an object of this invention to provide a surgical training device that realistically simulates such particular circumstances encountered during surgery. The medical training and simulation systems and devices of the present invention provide a user with visual, tactile and technical properties that emulate the situations extant in live surgical procedures. Emulation is an effort to equal or surpass real surgical conditions or effects in a surgical simulation.
In order to simplify training and minimize the use of cadavers in surgical training and in practice, the present invention contemplates the use of synthetic materials that are compounded, configured and combined to emulate the properties, responses and characteristics of human or animal tissue under surgical conditions and in response to the activities of surgical instruments. Such conditions and activities may include incision, penetration, dissection, occlusion, anastomosis, approximation, ablation, and the like.
Many surgical procedures involve the use of energy-based surgical instruments such as electrosurgical blades, probes, scissors, graspers, dissectors and the like. Electrosurgery is generally considered the application of high voltage, high frequency electrical energy to tissue for the purpose of cutting or destroying. Electrocautery is a type of electrosurgery in which an electrical current generates resistance heating in the instrument, which is sufficiently high to apply to tissue for the purpose of cutting or destroying tissue. Additionally, many procedures make use of energy devices based on high frequency sound. These instruments provide a surgeon with the convenience of nearly effortless cutting and dissection and nearly instant thermal hemostasis. Such instruments have become a standard within the surgical community and are used regularly.
It becomes readily apparent that any fake organs or organ simulation modules or training modules must include the ability to train in the use of energy-based surgical instruments. Many of the existing training or simulation modules require the use of harvested animal tissue, synthetic materials that must be wetted or infused with saline solution or materials having embedded metallic particles so that they are electrically conductive and suitable for energy-based surgical technique training. The most preferred synthetic materials such as silicone rubber, latex, vinyl, polyester, polyurethane and the like do not respond to energy-based surgical instruments and devices in a way that satisfies the need to train users to use the instruments in an actual surgical procedure. Therefore, one aspect of the present invention is to provide a combination of synthetic materials, some that have dielectric characteristics, and some that are electrically conductive and yet mimic the physical properties of natural tissue and action of energy-based surgical instruments and devices. In addition, the present invention provides a method for constructing various body parts, conduits, organs, cysts, tumors and the like that provides life-like synthetic samples.